Slashdot Log In
New Electrode Lets Batteries Charge In 10 Seconds
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Mar 11, 2009 06:41 PM
from the greased-electricity dept.
from the greased-electricity dept.
Al writes "A new lithium-ion electrode allows batteries to be charged and discharged in 10 seconds flat. Developed by Gerbrand Ceder, a professor of materials science at MIT, it could be particularly useful where rapid power bursts are needed, such as for hybrid cars, but also for portable electronic devices. In testing, batteries incorporating the electrodes discharged in just 10 seconds. In comparison, the best high-power lithium-ion batteries today discharge in a minute and a half, and conventional lithium-ion batteries, such as those found in laptops, can take hours to discharge. The new high rate electrode, the researchers calculate, would allow a one-liter battery based on the material to deliver 25,000 watts, or enough power for about 20 vacuum cleaners."
Related Stories
Submission: New Electrode Lets Batteries Charge in 10 Seconds by Anonymous Coward
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
20 vacuum cleaners... (Score:5, Funny)
...how many libraries of congress per square inch is that, again?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
yeah, wtf with the strange units?
Re:20 vacuum cleaners... (Score:5, Informative)
Lots of loads pull a lot of current initially or periodically. One example would be an electric motor since they talk about applications such as hybrids. The stall current is limited by the resistance of the windings but once it spins up, reverse voltage in the motor limits the current to much lower values. If it was a motor under a heavy load, the current could be much higher.
Another point is that in any high current circuit, the power wasted in the circuit as heat can be very high. It's current squared times resistance. With batteries that have a high internal resistance, that power heats the battery and is also power that's wasted. With a high current delivery capability, these would have very low internal resistance and under heavy loads, the batteries would run cooler and would be able to deliver more power to the actual load instead of throwing it away as heat.
This really is an accomplishment and a valuable one.
Just to illustrate battery self heating - if you ever get stranded in extreme cold because your battery doesn't have the power available to turn the engine over, just turn on the headlights for a while. It's a medium load but will heat the battery from the inside due to internal resistance and make the battery better able to start the car. This really works.
Parent
Re:20 vacuum cleaners... (Score:5, Informative)
what the heck is the point of a battery can run 20 vacuum cleaners, for only 10 seconds?
But it also means that you can *charge* it in 10 seconds. How nice it that. One problem for plug-in electric cars is that they take long to charge. If charging it doesn't take longer than filling up a tank of gas, that would be a step forward.
Parent
Re:20 vacuum cleaners... (Score:5, Insightful)
How about the slow charge, high drain battery bank in the basement. You know, the one that's being charged by the solar panels on the roof and the wind generator in the back yard. Oh, and occasionally off the grid, during off peak hours.
I'm kidding. When I go off the grid, I'll be finding a nice piece of land with good sized waterfall, and setting up a micro-hydro system.
Parent
Re:20 vacuum cleaners... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:20 vacuum cleaners... (Score:4, Funny)
"My God, it'll be beautiful!"
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I see the electrical equivalent of load balancing coming into play to address that issue. Just because a battery is physically capable of accepting a full charge in a few seconds doesn't mean that it must.
I'm sure that's also awful for battery life - a lot of NiMH batteries at least (I can't speak for other types as I have no idea) can accept fast and slow charges, but the 15-minute rapid chargers take a lot of lifetime off the battery as compared to a four-hour trickle charge.
Re:20 vacuum cleaners... (Score:5, Interesting)
Secondly, generally EV-sized batteries are fast-charged by using a 'dump pack', an identical fully charged pack of batteries that can supply as much current as the flat one can eat up. The important number is the continuous current draw, not peak.
That's what makes small, high-current batteries so good. Imagine a car window motor which pulls, say, 5 amps at 12 volts. You need to run 5amp wiring to it. But assume that the motor only needs to run for a few seconds at a time, very infrequently - instead of running 5 amp wiring, you can simply put a battery next to the motor that's sufficient to run it for a minute or so, and trickle charge the battery over the car's CAN bus.
Another use (actually this is one I read about where ultracaps are useful) is making a hard drive that doesn't lose data when the power drops during a write operation. Basically the cap would store enough energy for the drive to detect loss of external power, finish writing its buffer, and park itself before it ran flat.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Just wait for electrics to be banned from drag racing because they don't make enough noise and smoke... well actually smoke I can see happening.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:20 vacuum cleaners... (Score:5, Interesting)
Fast recharge and discharge go hand-in-hand. This will particularly improve the range of electric/hybrid cars, since regenerative breaking is limited right now by how fast the battery can take in all that power.
I don't see it improving the overall charge time of a car from a household plug, though. The limit there is that 120VAC just isn't enough. You can double up a circuit to get 240VAC, and in fact high draw appliances (like electric dryers) often already do in the US.
If dealerships are smart, they'll contract the services of local electricians to put a 240VAC plug in customers' garages and roll the cost into the overall financing.
Parent
Re:20 vacuum cleaners... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't see it improving the overall charge time of a car from a household plug, though.
Why not? Just install another battery pack at home, and keep it charged up at all times. It could then be used to quick-charge your car(s).
It could also be used as backup power during a blackout, or maybe even to supply home power during those times of day when electric rates are especially high. You could charge it from the grid (especially during those times of day when rates are low), from solar cells on your roof or from a wind turbine.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No, watts are correct. The thing that's special about this battery isn't the capacity, it's the rapid charge/discharge.
Wrong analogy... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
20 vacuum cleaners for 10 seconds? (Score:5, Funny)
1.6 Horsepower vacuum cleaners? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm fairly surprised to hear that vacuum cleaners use that much power - 1.25kw each is about 1.6 horsepower each. That should be enough for your vacuum cleaners to do 0-60 in the 10 seconds worth of battery you've got...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:1.6 Horsepower vacuum cleaners? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
20 vacuum cleaners for 10 seconds?
That sucks.
How many yomamas is that?
Portable Nuclear Device... (Score:4, Funny)
> deliver 25,000 watts, or enough power for about 20 vacuum cleaners."
What could possibly go wrong with that!!??
Couldn't be any more shocking than GM's (Score:3, Interesting)
new electric bass boat, the Chevy Fibrillator ...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That kind of short circuit current would probably amputate fingers if someone shorted one with a ring, melt metal in seconds (or less), and depending on the circuit, could possibly create enough of a magnetic field to launch that molten metal across a room (think rail guns).
High fault currents can lead to a whole range of bizarre effects. People will need to take off jewelry and should wear gloves and safety glasses when handling them. Also
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I think secretly I want it to be true....no wait, not secretly, I just want that EMP to happen
After spending way too many hours in a datacenter today (which, incidentally sounds about like 10000 vacuum cleaners), I could care less about escaping kids, but if an EMP could put an end to the buzzing in my head, I'd strongly consider it.
Good for cars? (Score:5, Funny)
Great, by the time I have backed out of the driveway I'll need to recharge it.
Think about it (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, the big thing about electric driving isn't getting started in the first place, it's reclaiming the energy when you have to stop (at least for inner city driving.) If you have a battery that is bordering on a supercapacitor to dump energy into, you can reclaim nearly all of the stopping energy into the battery to use to start again. Given that there are 745 watts/hp, a battery capable of a charge rate of 25KW gives you 33 horsepower of braking capacity with one cell. Get 3 of them in a car and you can reclaim 100hp during a stop, which would be good for all but the most grueling emergency stops (depending on the weight of the car).
Parent
Re:Think about it (Score:4, Insightful)
A 100hp generator weighs 1500 pounds.
Really? I assume you're including the substantial weight of a diesel engine to drive said generator, as a quick google search turns up the Winco EC75PSB4G-17 - a 75 kilowatt emergency backup generator head (just the part that turns shaft movement into AC power) that weighs in at 605 lbs. That's a unit intended for stationary use, not to be mounted to a vehicle. I'm sure a similar device intended for mobile use could be constructed from less massive materials.
In fact, may I direct you to look over the specifications page for the Honda FCX Clarity: link [honda.com]. There you will find that power from the vehicle's fuel cell stack and lithium ion battery is converted to motive force by a 100kW (134 hp) AC electric motor with integrated transaxle. While the page lacks a weight listing for said motive unit, I doubt it exceeds 400 lbs.
Parent
That would suck (Score:3, Funny)
Boom!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Or is this the Sony method of rapid discharge?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
c'mon, boys (Score:5, Funny)
a page of comments and no one has yet said:
"10 seconds? the average /. geek discharges faster than that"
sigh.
Re:c'mon, boys (Score:5, Funny)
That's because in order to prove the conclusion, they'd have to have done the experiment......
Parent
Armageddon (Score:5, Funny)
My laptop was better (Score:5, Funny)
Star Trek inches closer (Score:5, Funny)
Anyone else notice this from the article?
Wouldn't it be something if someone trademarks this use of lithium diphosphate on targeted crystal faces as, oh, I dunno, dilithium crystals?
First, transparent aluminum, [wikipedia.org] and now this!
Re:Star Trek inches only a little closer (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Star Trek inches closer (Score:4, Interesting)
So, Slashdot just recently had the Could Fuller Take Trek Back To TV? [slashdot.org] and What Has Fox Got Against Its Own Sci-Fi Shows? [slashdot.org] articles, then this one, which I can imagine influenced Mr Z to notice the dilithium crystal Star Trek connection. So he linked to the related Wikipedia transparent aluminum article, and I followed that link. In that article's In Fiction section, it is mentioned that the Enterprise D's windows are made of transparent aluminum, as noted in an episode that involved subspace anomalies and hull breaches.
This reminded me of a TNG episode I saw when I was a small child watching TV with my dad. All I could remember from the episode was a lady looking frozen and half way through the floor, and I was scared silly that I would fall through the floor right there in the living room. Just last week I had actually thought of that episode and tried searching for it, unsuccessfully. That one part and E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial are the few childhood memories I have of TV scaring me. I wanted to see what the episode looked like to me now.
So I followed the Wikipedia link to the TNG episode [wikipedia.org], and the description of the episode matched what I remembered. So I quickly found a torrent for the episode (I would never ever actually buy the DVD online just to watch one episode once to satisfy my curiosity. If it was streamed online by the copyright holder with ads I would probably go that route), downloaded it, and watched the episode. I finally saw that childhood fear with grown up eyes.
And that's why I love the internet. I was reading a news site, read a comment that referenced some interesting sounding technology, and stumbled upon a childhood fear that I had tried searching for only a week before. Then I reexperienced the fear initiator as I am now to see how I would perceive it. Now I am writing about my experience and attaching it to the original comment that started it. And I did all this within a short and entertaining time span. I love the internet. I think this shows that, at least in some way, we are living in an age of awesomeness.
Parent
ELECTRODE used EXPLOSION! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:charging (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:charging (Score:5, Funny)
All you need is a wall socket that can deliver 25,000W!
Note to self: pick up some 100A fuses on the way home.
Parent
Re:charging (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
So it sounds like fast charging has been developed, and it's just a matter of taking orders and tooling the factories at this point.
Re:charging (Score:5, Informative)
>Sure, as long as you can find a 25000 watt outlet.
I don't think so...
Typical Miles per kilowatt hour is 4.
A 100 mile fill-up = 25 kilowatt hours = 90,000,000 watt seconds.
If you want that in 10 seconds, you'd need a 9 Megawatt outlet.
Parent
Re:fast enough for a (Score:5, Interesting)
first thought?
Railgun
Parent
Re:fast enough for a (Score:5, Informative)
You probably would want capacitors for those, with other pulse-shaping devices. In fact, this is what they actually do. Ten seconds of discharge is way too slow for a rail gun.
Parent
Re:fast enough for a (Score:5, Funny)
I thought of writing I disclaimer saying as much, but my submit button discharged too fast.
Parent
Re:fast enough for a (Score:5, Funny)
You know they have drugs for that. The blue pill and all.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I prefer to see how deep the rabbit hole goes!
Re:fast enough for a (Score:5, Insightful)
but for a man-portable railgun, the batteries are used to charge the capacitors, all in the back pack.
Parent
Re:Ka-ching. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent